Town Square

You might own your neighbors' mail boxes

Did you know that mail boxes placed on your property for mail delivery to your neighbors may be your property and your LIABILITY? Do you realize that if a mail delivery person or your neighbor gets injured delivering or retrieving the mail it could be your LIABILITY? Do you know that it is nearly impossible to get such LIABILITY remedied because USPS does not wish to relocate the mail boxes to the recipients' properties.

Check your title documents. You may be at risk!

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Posted by Anonymous
a resident of another community
on May 2, 2007 at 4:53 pm

Neighbors' mailboxes located on YOUR property are your property according to USPS and county officials. Unless there is a specific USPS easement for location of the mail boxes on YOUR property, the mailboxes are YOUR property, maintenance responsibility and liability. CHECK with your Postmaster to confirm.

USPS does not provide relocation services, or encourages relocation from group mail delivery on non-recipient properties. Neighbors could place mail boxes on their own property and might not be granted delivery to those mail boxes. Neighbors have to request a new delivery location from USPS and it is USPS' decision to grant delivery to the new location. CHECK with your Postmaster to confirm.

It seems that USPS believes Diablo Vista Road in Alamo's Cervato/Lunada neighborhood is exceptionally different from the many, many lanes in Alamo receiving mail. Diablo Vista Road, the upper portion, is not allowed to have mail boxes at their property like all other lanes in Alamo. That seems to be a great reason for USPS placing mail boxes on non-recipient property at the entrance to Diablo Vista Road and forcing the landowner to accept the liability and maintenance for the unwanted mailboxes.